Ghost Town Page 0,3

in between Monica and Claire and sat down. Monica and Gina clapped, and Jennifer, finally, stopped glaring and grinned, proud to have earned their approval.

It was just . . . sad.

Claire shook her head. She still wanted to sit down and rest, but it really wasn't worth the small victory to be part of this. She stood up, grabbed her chair, and towed it across the crowded room to slide it next to the guy Jennifer had stolen the chair from, who was still standing. "Here," she said. "I'm leaving anyway."

Now he really looked confused. So did Monica and her Monickettes, as if the concept of givebacks had never crossed their path before. Claire sighed, shifted the weight of her backpack, and prepared to leave, mocha in hand.

"Hey!" Monica's grip on her elbow dragged her to a stop. "What the hell? I want you to stay!"

"Why?" Claire asked, and jerked her arm free. "So you can needle me for an hour? Are you really that bored?"

Monica looked even more confused. Nobody ever turned down being part of the queen bee's inner circle. After that second of vulnerability, though, her face hardened. "Don't diss me, Danvers. I'm warning you."

"I'm not dissing you." Claire sighed. "I'm ignoring you. There's a difference. Dissing you implies I think you're actually important."

As she walked out, she heard someone behind her laugh and clap. They were quickly hushed, but it still warmed her just a little. She didn't often get up in Monica's grille that directly, but she was sick of the games. Monica just needed to move on and find somebody else to poke her pins into.

The mocha was still delicious. Maybe even just a little bit more delicious for being outside in the open air, come to think of it. Claire nodded to a few people she knew on the street, all of them permanent residents, and strolled down the block. She wasn't in the mood to shop for clothes, but the little faded bookstore farther down beckoned her.

Book Mad was a dusty hole-in-the-wall, crammed floor to ceiling with stacks of volumes in--as far as Claire had ever been able to tell--only a vague sense of order. Generally, nonfiction was at the front and fiction at the back, but you really could never tell. The stacks never seemed to get any smaller, nor was the dust ever disturbed, but she was always finding new stuff she hadn't seen before.

That was weirdly entertaining.

"Hi, Claire," said the proprietor, Dan, a tall guy about her father's age. He was thin and a little nerdy, but that might just have been the glasses, which were either wickedly retro or seriously lame; Claire could never decide. He had on a funny T-shirt, as usual. Today's featured a cartoon figure running from a giant T. rex, and it read EXERCISE: SOME MOTIVATION REQUIRED. She tried not to smile, but lost the battle. It really was funny. "Got some physics stuff that just came in. It's over there." He gestured vaguely off into the distance. Claire nodded.

"Hey," she said. "Where do you get the books? I mean, they're old. Some of them are really kind of ancient."

He shrugged and looked down at the antique register on the counter, and brushed some dust off the keys. "Oh, you know. Around."

"From a storage room in the library? Maybe on the fourth floor?" She had him. He looked up at her, eyes narrowing. "I've been in there. I was wondering what they were going to do with all that stuff once they were done with it. So, who gives you the books?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Dan said, and all the warmth was gone suddenly. He looked uncomfortable and suspicious, and the funny T-shirt suddenly didn't fit his mood at all. "Let me know if you find anything you want."

The fourth floor of the school's library had been a locked maze of boxes of old books, gathered from who-knew-where by the vampires. At the time Claire had visited--well, broken in--vampires (no doubt reporting to Amelie, the town's Founder) had been combing through looking for one particular book. She'd wondered what they'd planned to do with all the rest once their quest was finished.

Naturally, it turned out Amelie was making money off of the extra books. Vampires were nothing if not practical.

As Claire was thumbing through the dusty stacks, squinting to read faded titles, occasionally sneezing from the smell of old paper, she found a slim, leather-bound volume that was still in pretty